How to Add Your Own Sound or Music to TikTok

TikTok has recently been the fastest growing social media platform with a user base of 1.2 billion monthly active users. That’s already more than 1/8th of all of humanity! With this kind of immense reach, you want to go viral on TikTok.

Learning how to make a sound on TikTok as a TikTok creator will be crucial for your TikTok growth. As you may already know, TikTok’s backbone is its sound. All content that has ever gone viral on TikTok is backdropped against some kind of sound; may it be an already popular or original sound.

Be a step closer to your dreams of being truly viral on TikTok by learning how to strategically add original sound to your TikTok video content.

Why Make and Add Original Sound?

Yes, popular sound on TikTok will have an innate advantage in giving your videos exposure, but that’s just doing what is already trendy by riding the bandwagon. There’s nothing wrong with that on TikTok and it is quite encouraged. But if you want to be the one who starts trends and be a cut above all TikTok influencers, you have got to master your original sound game.

You have probably uploaded TikTok videos that use popular sounds to get exposure for your videos. But have you ever asked yourself why and how these popular sounds become popular in the first place?

TikTok influencers with tens of millions of followers decide which sounds will be the next big popular sound. They add sound to videos that everyone will find trendy. This way, their popularity grows exponentially every time someone uses and piggybacks off of their sound in a TikTok video. Practice doing this and reach heights you thought only the TikTok elite could reach.

Continue to grow your TikTok following with video uploads that use popular sound on TikTok but stir the pot more than once in a while and upload a video that has its original sound. Whatever sound this may be, make it a sound that TikTok users will immediately relate to and appreciate. Also, make the sound ‘Sharable’ in the options so other TikTok users can use your sound.  

Be the Trendsetter

A popular sound on TikTok is usually a segment of an already famous song, or something someone famous has said. They go viral because they are short, catchy, and easily relatable. Build on this short, catchy, and relatable template and create sounds that other TikTok users will want to dance to or lip-sync to in their videos. This way, you will be the trend and not just follow.

Step by Step: How to Add your Sound or Music to TikTok Videos

How do you create a TikTok video with your soundtrack instead of with one of the songs provided in the app? This can be done in 3 easy ways.

A. Play the sound or music out loud while recording

1.  Start by playing the track you want to use out loud.

2.  Begin recording your video.

3.  Do not add any sounds from TikTok’s library.

4.  Be able to keep the original sound recorded with your video.

5.  Upload the video to TikTok.

B.  Use a video editing app to add music

1.  Download a good video editing app like Inshot. Inshot works for Android and iOS.

2.  Record a video using your mobile device’s camera app.

3.  Open your video editing app Inshot and select the video you just shot.

4.  To add music to your video, tap the ‘Musical Note’ icon.

5.  Choose ‘Tracks’ from the drop-down menu that will appear.

6.  Here, you could choose a song from Inshot’s library or

7.  Select a track you have stored on your mobile device.

8.  Tap a song to preview it.

9.  Tap ‘Use’ on the song of your choice.

10.  To adjust the part of the song that will play on your video, select ‘Edit.’

11.  To mute the original audio on your video, tap the video track and slide the volume down to 0%.

12.  Tap the ‘Play’ button to preview your video.

13.  Once you are happy with your video, tap the ‘Check’ button.

14.  To save the video, tap the ‘Share’ button and select ‘Save.’

15.  The video will be saved to your device’s camera roll.

16.  Open TikTok and upload the video from your device as you normally would.

C.  Upload Your Own Songs Through a Music Distributor

If you are an indie musician who has their original compositions and wants in on the fame and fortune TikTok brings, you might want to enlist the help of one of the many music distributor companies that officially catalog songs into TikTok.

 These music distributors act as a middleman between you and TikTok by standardizing the format of your uploaded songs. They also release your songs to other song-sharing apps like Spotify, iTunes, YouTube Music, Deezer, and many others.

1.  Enroll as an artist with a music distributor like Distrokid or Tunecore.

2.  Make sure to check the box that declares that you want your music released on their TikTok service.

3.  Pick a release date for your song.

4.  On the day of your song’s release, go to TikTok, search your name and use that song.

5.  Try to be the very first one to use your song as a sound to get the ‘Original’ tag on that video.

6.  As the original curator of the song, users can go back to your TikTok account profile where they will see links to your musical profile as an artist. This way you have TikTok working to funnel traffic and diversify your approach to more reach and viral exposure.

 The Social Media Knowledge You Learn Gets You Viral

Going viral these days is not just getting lucky on the internet. It is the knowledge you learn, master, and use that gets you to a viral influencer status.

Comments are closed.